- published: 18 Apr 2014
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Plovdiv (Bulgarian: Пловдив) is the second-largest city in Bulgaria after the capital Sofia with a population of 338,153 inhabitants as of February, 2011. It is administrative center of Plovdiv Province and the municipalities of City of Plovdiv, Maritsa municipality and Rodopi municipality, which municipal body has a population of 403,153 inhabitants as of February, 2011. It is an important economic, transport, cultural and educational center, as well as the second-largest city in the historical international region of Thrace after Istanbul. It is the tenth-largest city in the Balkans after Istanbul, Athens, Bucharest, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Zagreb, Skopje and Tirana.
Plovdiv's history spans 6,000 years, with traces of a Neolithic settlement dating to roughly 4000 BC and some rank it as Europe's oldest city. Plovdiv is known in the West for most of its history by the Greek name Philippopolis, which was created in 340 BC. Plovdiv was originally a Thracian city before later becoming a Greek and a major Roman one. In the Middle Ages, it retained its strategic regional importance, changing hands between the Byzantine and Bulgarian Empires. It came under Ottoman rule in the 14th century. In 4 January, 1878, Plovdiv was liberated from Ottoman rule by the Russian army and was within the borders of Bulgaria until July, the same year, when it became the capital of an autonomous Ottoman region of Eastern Rumelia. In 1885, it and Eastern Rumelia itself became part of Bulgaria.